As part of our Ash vs Britain week, we’ve decided to break form and have a go at reviewing comics that you can find on the shelves of ordinary British newsagents and supermarkets, rather than Diamond-distributed American titles. First out of the blocks, and the obvious place to start, is the venerable 2000AD. While I’m a big fan of certain elements of the comic’s history – most notably Strontium Dog, and I’ve a few Dredd and Anderson books kicking around, along with (of course) Halo Jones – I’ve never really bought it on a week-in, week-out basis. I had a brief run of following it around the time it hit Prog 1000, but that’s really about it. Nevertheless, it’s a British comics institution, and remains the fertile breeding ground for up-and-coming talent as it’s always been.

So, how accessible is it to someone wandering in to a Notting Hill newsagents (I tried WH Smith, but sadly it was nowhere to be found, although they did have the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine) and picking it up? Well, I’ve decided to wait until review time to actually read it – and so in a slight change of format, I’ll be reading each strip in turn, and posting immediate reactions to them. Let’s see how this goes…

Judge Dredd
Well, where else would we start? The opening strip is – of course – Dredd, and in a surprising move, it’s written by John Wagner. Still. How does that man keep going? Hasn’t he run out of Dredd stories to tell by now? Still, there’s something genuinely reassuring about his presence, as few have spent as long as he has mastering the challenging comics-epic-serialised-in-tiny-chunks format. And certainly, there are elements of his earlier work here in how he’s able to bring a new reader into the story (at part eight) with a minimum of clunky exposition, and in just how much he actually crams in to the six pages given to work with. The story actually appears to be relatively standalone as a chapter – it’s an interlude concerning an assassination attempt on a character whom the arc’s main antagonist is also planning/attempting to assassinate – but as such feels a little like treading water. It doesn’t really go anywhere, aside from a closing page that sets up future plot, and considering all the Strontium Dog he’s done over the years, I’m not sure if Wagner has anything new to say on the “mutie uprising” front. It’s hampered slightly, too, by art from Colin MacNeil that while generally solid, veers a little too strongly into cartoonishness at times. Not terrible, but a bit forgettable.

Damnation Station
Ah, a new part one! Excellent. The recap page gives enough information on the strip’s basic setup – a group exiled to a space station to fend off alien incursions, apparently forcibly. If you want to think in Marvel terms, it’s sort of like the cast of S.W.O.R.D. were the Thunderbolts. This is largely atmospheric – setting up the silent introduction of a sinister new character, and filling in a bit of backstory and setup concerning others – but it works pretty well. While elements of the premise are fairly “stock”, there’s enough idiosyncracy – such as the rather terrifying… thing that seems to run the Station – to make it interesting. And it’s well composed – Boo Cook’s art has in places that slightly annoying “waxy” look that was de rigeur for ’90s 2000AD, but the scenes with Jaeger look great; and writer Al Ewing paces it well, as well as coming up with a brutally effective way of signifying Jaeger’s menace. I’d be intrigued enough to read more of this, certainly.

The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael
Ugh, a supernatural Western. Why does 2000AD – and indeed comics in general – like supernatural (or futuristic) Westerns so much? To its credit, this is another good example of playing the serialised format well – it may be chapter five of the story, but it’s a fairly standard “journey”, so it’s easy to hop onto and understand – but really, I can’t see it as anything other than Saint of Killers with the serial numbers filed off. Rob Williams has done much better in his time, and although the stark black-and-white art of Dom Reardon is an interesting change of pace, it does sort of feel like it’s wandered in from another comic.

Zombo
Ooh, look, more Al Ewing! The man gets around. This is the token “bonkers” effort, but unfortunately, kicks off feeling like by far the most difficult of the strips to get into fresh – the contents page recap feels like it’s only telling about 1% of the story, and so I honestly have little clue who anyone is or what they’re doing. If I did, I’d probably be enjoying it, though – it’s ludicrously gratuitous, like a Troma film slapped onto the comics page, with barely a panel going by without someone exploding or being turned into a fleshy skeleton. Even without really following the story, moments raise a smirk (and Zombo himself comes off as an amusingly deadpan-stroke-angry presence), and although I suspect the excess (and Henry Flint’s uncompromising art) might grow wearying over a longer story, this seems to have a lot of promise to entertain.

Nikolai Dante
Ah, the only character I remember from the last time I bought an issue of 2000AD. But even then Robbie Morrison’s story felt like a sprawling epic that I was simply never going to get on with unless I’d managed to read every issue here, and so it proves as Nikolai and some other people fight what appears to be a T-1000, and an opening page of flashback features characters that (unless I’m mistaken) aren’t anywhere else in this issue’s chapter. That said, the issue’s final strip also contains probably the best art of the lot – a lovely job by Simon Fraser, generally making use of wider panels and open space, and a strong colouring job by Gary Caldwell to boot. Great-looking, I just wish I could get in any way invested in the story.

So that’s 2000AD circa 2010. On the whole, it’s not bad; there’s interesting stuff there, and a surprisingly decent crop of creators involved – Wagner and R. Morrison are old hands, while Ewing certainly marks himself out as the title’s current up-and-coming talent. And with the possible exception of MacNeil (an old hand on Dredd, but feeling slightly like he’s on an off day here compared to past work), the artists are all strong – it certainly feels like a much better-looking comic than it was ten years or so ago. But by the same token, nothing really grabs me – there’s certainly nothing of the effortless brilliance of Strontium Dog in its heyday – and while it offers good value at two quid for five stories (considering you’d pay more than that for the cheapest Marvel or DC single issue), it’s slightly disappointing that there’s little concession to the casual reader (you’d hope that there’d be a mandatory minimum of one entirely standalone story – e.g. a Future Shock – per week, say). But if you’re passing your local newsie, and missing your weekly comics fix – or if you just fancy a bit of nostalgia for the days when buying comics from a newsagent instead of Forbidden Planet was the norm – then 2000AD is still worth a look. And should you make the switch from “casual” reader to “regular”, you might enjoy it even more.